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Monthly Archives: February 2014

I have a new piece up on Thought Catalog, a navel-gazing exploration into narcissism and the concern that “kids these days” are self-centered, entitled assholes, raised on a plethora of gold stars and participation trophies.

I dig into the research arguing both sides, as well as subjecting my friends and family — in a completely biased sample — to a pop psychology quiz on narcissism. (Spoiler alert: the younger generation comes out on top.)

Ultimately though, I believe that all is not lost, and really this self-aggrandizing trend is more a reflection of our age than our generation. And maybe it’s not such a bad thing. After all, why would we try to change the world for the better if we didn’t actually think we could do it?

Check out the full piece, complete with a link to the narcissism quiz, here, and let me know how you measure up.

Scientists have pursued every possible avenue to try to figure out why we keep getting fatter. They’ve explored our genes, our brains, our hormones and our gut bacteria, not to mention our fatty, sugary diets and sedentary lifestyles. Now, a recent study has come out blaming our expanding waistlines and poor health on our parents’ behaviors before we were born.

My newest article is up on The Atlantic, discussing recent research on the impact a mother’s diet has on her offspring’s health, affecting our brains and subsequently our bodies. This line of research isn’t new — otherstudies have shown links between a woman’s health during pregnancy and her child’s weight later in life — but this is one of the first to provide a potential explanation for this phenomenon by looking in the brain at some crucial hunger hormones.

However, you can’t blame all of your problems on your parents; what you eat still has a major impact on how these brain changes manifest:

Now, I’m all for shifting blame away from myself and onto my parents, but I feel that, like every possible explanation behind the obesity epidemic, this is only one piece of the puzzle. Genes undoubtedly play a role in body mass, fat percentage, and metabolism, but so does what you eat and how many calories you burn through physical activity…The problem of obesity, like so many health and social issues we face today, is that there isn’t just a single contributor to the problem. If there were, it would have been solved by now.

We’ve all heard about the “left-brain/right-brain” hype, which, to be honest, is really just a bunch of malarkey. Supposedly, a bigger right hemisphere means you’ll be a great artist, and a larger left indicates a penchant for science. If the dancer spins clockwise, you’re right-brained, while if you’re left-brained she twirls counter-clockwise.

Fortunately, all of these neural conspiracy theories have been largely debunked. However, the fact does remain that we do have two hemispheres that are connected but divided – a cortical “separate but equal,” if you will. And oftentimes, one of these hemispheres is larger than the other, the smaller being situated slightly behind. Now, again, this is not to say that the bigger hemisphere is better, simply that they are asymmetric, and presumably this asymmetry has evolved for a reason.

Researchers from University College London have investigated the purpose of this neural asymmetry on a much smaller scale using the zebrafish, a common animal model used for investigating basic but deceptively complex brain-related phenomena thanks to their simplified central nervous system. Published in the journal Current Biology, the researchers discovered that neuronal asymmetry lends itself towards enhanced processing of sensory information in the zebrafish, and that a symmetrical brain can result in an impairment of the processing of visual or olfactory stimuli.

The researchers focused on the habenula – an area located near the thalamaus that is a type of way station in the brain, processing sensory information. The habenula receives inputs from around the brain and helps to designate the appropriate neurochemical output for neurons further down the line. However, cells in the left and right habenula react differently to different types of stimuli, resulting in separate projections to other areas of the brain.

In the current study, cells in the right habenula were largely responsible for receiving odor information, while the left-sided neurons processed visual information. Very few neurons responded to both types of stimuli. These left and right neurons also had distinct outputs, the left heading to the dorsal, or top, interpeduncular nuclei (IPN), while the right had outputs to the ventral, or bottom, IPN. These ventral and dorsal IPN neurons subsequently had their own distinct outputs as well, meaning the entire operation of processing visual and olfactory information was distinct, divided between the two hemispheres.

The real test of any scientific phenomenon though, is what happens when you disrupt this process (scientists really just like to mess things up to see what will happen). Will the other hemisphere take over, or will that function be entirely lost?

To find out, the researchers “shocked” the fish with cold – meaning when the fish were still embryos, they exposed them to extreme cold with the hopes of disrupting their typical gene expression and thus their cell development. In fact, using cold shock was so successful, it resulted in a complete reversal of many of the fishes’ neurons, meaning that what was right was now left, and left was right. Not only did this lead to a switch in the processing of sensory information, but the entire assembly line from the habenula neurons on down was reversed, a mirrored reflection of the fishes’ normal cell functions. Light information was now processed on the right side, however, the projections to the IPN remained the same. So light processed on the right side projected to the dorsal IPN, whereas previously the dorsal IPN had been activated by the left habenula light response.

The final step was to find out what happens when asymmetry is completely lost, to ascertain whether there was a functional benefit to this lateralization (again, scientists really just like to mess with a perfectly good brain process). To do this, the researchers manipulated the fishes’ neurons so that the habenula cells were either all right or all left. That isn’t to say that all the neurons were located on either the left or the right side, but rather the cells acted like they were all “right” neurons or “left” neurons, receiving inputs and creating outputs from and to their respective sources.

This complete lateralization resulted in a loss of the opposite side’s function, meaning the “double-left” fish had exceptional vision but were unable to process odors, while the “double-right” fish were blind to the light but had a super-power sense of smell.

Finally, even fish that were raised in complete darkness still showed this laterality when it came to processing visual information, meaning that the brain’s left-right organization was dependent on gene expression, not the cells’ experience or exposure to light.

From this, the researchers concluded that it doesn’t actually matter which side the cells are on, so long as each type of cell and its connections are in place. But a loss of those neurons, even if others are in their place, leads to complete functional disruption. And really, this makes sense; it is not the location of the cell but its connections that truly matter, dictating its function.

Yet another instance of science proving cool stuff that, if we really thought about it, we already kind of figured to be true.

Maybe it’s first prescribed to you for a bad back. Or maybe your friend who got wisdom tooth surgery had a couple pills left over and gave you one to help you relax. At first, you’re fine with just a pill or two, taking them occasionally on the weekend to celebrate or to help you unwind. Then it becomes a regular thing in the evening after work–-just like a glass of wine, right?

But then one isn’t quite doing it for you; you start losing that blissful initial buzz as your tolerance starts to kick in. So you up it to two. Just two, that’s not bad, right? And then someone tells you–you’re not sure who, or maybe you read it on the internet–that if you crush them up and snort them you can get that quick burst back like you used to have.

You try to cut back, going a day or two without, but you feel awful. It’s like the flu, but worse. The flu mixed with crippling depression and anxiety and insomnia. You take one so you can get some sleep, and then so you can get out of bed the next morning. And then it’s just so easy, providing you with that blissful daze that gets you through the day, staving off the morose and despair that are lurking around the corner, waiting to envelop you when it’s been too long.

But this is getting expensive. I mean, these pills are $80 a pop on the street! You’ve long since burned through your savings, but you can’t stop now, that would make you face the darkness, and nothing is worse than that. So you suck it up and make the switch, something you swore you’d never do. And now you can’t live without it, though soon you may not be able to live with it.

—

Last Sunday, we lost one of the greatest actors of our generation.

And while Philip Seymour Hoffman technically died of a heroin overdose – the heartbreaking, embarrassing and ghastly details on view for all to see in the same newspapers and magazines that so touchingly eulogize him in preceding and succeeding articles–it is prescription painkillers that reportedly triggered his relapse and led to his eventual demise.

This story, sadly, is not a new one. Not the tale of the movie or rock star dying in a blaze of drug-fueled glory, but the sad, lonely, accidental opiate overdose. And despite the panic over potentially laced bags of heroin leading to a rash of deaths, the majority of these overdoses are from legal prescription drugs like Oxycontin or Vicodin.

Because these drugs are technically legal, intended to be prescribed by a doctor to help you heal, there is a misconception that they are safer than street drugs. And while it’s true that they may be cleaner than heroin–unadulterated by additives ranging from the relatively mundane, like laxatives, baking powder, and lactose, to the potentially deadly fentanyl, methamphetamine, desomorphine, or Krokodil–prescription pills are not innocuous.

The effect of opiate drugs like heroin, morphine, Vicodin, and Oxycontin are identical in the brain. All of these substances are derived from the opium poppy plant, and once in the brain, our receptors don’t care if they were bought in a pharmacy or on the street. Opiates are depressants, meaning they suppress neuronal functioning by attaching themselves to opioid receptors scattered throughout the brain, preventing the neurons from firing. However, these drugs are not selective, and while they can stop us from feeling pain, they can also stop us from breathing.

Imagine if you had to concentrate on every breath you took, every inhale and exhale. While advocates of mindfulness meditation would be pleased, most of us would be unable to function. Fortunately, our brainstem takes care of this for us, automatically contracting our diaphragm and expanding our lungs. Death from overdose occurs when this system stops functioning. The cells in the brainstem become overwhelmed by the opioids that are inhibiting their functioning and telling them to stop firing. When this happens, we stop breathing. We begin to suffocate. Our lips and nails turn blue; we might start seizing or spasming. Eventually, our heart stops beating.

In 2010, 16,651 people died this way from a prescription medication. Deaths caused by prescription drug abuse now make up more overdose deaths than those from heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine combined.

From Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon, prescription drug abuse has become a raging epidemic. The governor of Vermont recently spent his entire State of the State address discussing the problem, and President Obama and the White House have raised similar concerns, trotting out staggering statistics like the fact that drug overdoses are now the leading cause of death of America, comprising more fatalities than car accidents. In Ohio, one of the states hardest hit by the epidemic, deaths from drug overdose increased by 440% since 1999, up to a staggering 1,765 people in 2011. That’s five people dying every day from an overdose.

But an addiction to painkillers is not a sustainable one, with pills costing anywhere from $60 – $100, depending on their strength. So more and more people are making the switch to heroin, a $10 drug potentially laced with dangerous additives and laden with connotations. New York has seen an 84% rise in heroin overdoses in the past two years, coinciding with a 67% increase in heroin seized, supply following demand.

All told, there are over 38,000 deaths by drug overdose every year in the U.S., more than 50% of which are from prescription drugs, 75% of those opiate-based. And these numbers are rising.

Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death is undoubtedly a tragedy and a great loss, but odds are, Hoffman wasn’t the only one who died last Sunday.